What happened
Threats targeting AI leaders and data centres surged sevenfold between late February and May, according to the Wall Street Journal, prompting tech companies to significantly increase executive protection budgets. Palantir's executive protection budget rose 150% to nearly $3 million in 2025, while Oracle's climbed 85% to $5.6 million, largely funding security for Larry Ellison. Across the S&P 500, the share of tech companies disclosing executive protection spending grew from 26.8% in 2021 to 38.1% last year, following incidents like an attempted firebombing at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's home and an intruder warning of threats at Anthropic's lobby.
Why it matters
Increased physical security costs for AI leadership will impact operational budgets and risk profiles for founders and procurement teams. The surge in threats, driven by job-loss anxiety according to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, necessitates enhanced security measures, shifting executive protection from a perk to a strategic imperative. This trend, alongside rising AI cyber threats and model distillation attacks, indicates a broader pattern of escalating risks associated with AI development and deployment, requiring security architects to assume agentic workflows are untrusted and to prioritise comprehensive threat modelling.
